🇬🇧 Paean to multitudes
1363. In multitudes the land shall live
with all beings endowed with the right exist and to teem as far as their abilities and genomes permit them in an abundance of ways and forms and species that arise from the common multitudes and perish again as part of the earth’s endless churning of land, sea, weather and climate in a stable rate of extinct species per one million years.
1364. In multitudes the sea shall fill
with glossy fish, side by side, belly against fin, that abound in fiords and throng in sounds and bays, fill the rivers and cover the floor of the sea, reefs, underwater rocks and bars with colors, crayfish, shrimp, plants, anemones, algae, plankton, and krill that shine like star-studded skies in the depths of the sea, while whales sing from ocean to ocean.
1365. In multitudes the soil shall be nourished
by bacteria, amoeba, cells, microfauna, springtails, beetles, worms, by more forms of life than anywhere else on earth; the sweetly smelling, dark, crumbling, moist, crawling enzymepotent soil; with plant roots, tree roots, water, minerals, a protected and undisturbed thousand year layer of fertiliser, energy and life.
1366. In multitudes the air shall be sated
with treks of birds in patterns, formations, flocks, made dense by starlings, traversing cranes, watched by eagles, brimming with songbirds, seabirds, wading birds, beach-birds, fowls, swallows, bats, clouds of butterflies, hoverflies, dragonflies, millions of species of insects: muscular, breathing, flying beings on trillions and more trillions of winged pairs.
1367. In multitudes the darkness shall abound
With ten thousand species of moths, nightwings, owls, insects, mice, rodents, snakes, and predators that live by night vision, by sense of smell, by hearing; with birds in flight across the night sky under moonlight, on the magnetic rays of the earth; everything that lives and fills out this world, that we don't see, but when the morning comes, soundless, full of light, they shall all be counted and known.
1368. In multitudes the water shall flow
with aquatic plants, crayfish, nymphs, frogs, birds, minnows, perch, pikes, salmon, water rats, beavers; with riverbanks protected deep into the adjoining land and covered with woods and meadow grass, bushes, perennial plants, with snow and ice, running clean every spring.
1369. In multitudes the day shall grow
large and wide open, formed of living landscapes, stones, and rocks generous of meaning, of coasts and lagoons and fiords that are present with us and merged with our senses; with hills, valleys, mountains and rain and clouds in their own dignities, shiny and changeable, but forever the same; of towns, houses, and all of us, bound to the earth and water and grass and trees and leaves, the particles of our organismes and the colours and images of our thoughts, that grow out into the multitudes of the day and are recreated every night in the growth of our dreams.
1370. In multutudes the land shall saved
by returning half of the land to the free multitudes, by banning all fishing and combustion engines from half the coastal waters, by protection all lakes, all streams, all rivers together with zones of multitudes stretching hundreds of meters along all banks, all shores, and by protecting all coasts, set them free for multitudes by removing thousands of poisons from agriculture and gardening, by removing fertilisers from all open fields, reduce animal farming to a size that can be raised freely, by protecting all bogs, prohibit the sale of spagnum and replace it all with compost, by protecting all wetlands, stopping the pumps, by replacing all plastic wrap with cellulose film, by restricting the number of farming animals, levying an common import tariff on all meat for consumption, by subsidising costs of decent food, by closing and substituting the depraved meat- fur- and cage industry, by remultituding the near-dead fields with all the forms of life that soil, water and air can sustain.
1371. In multitudes the earth shall rise again
if nothing happened and nothing changed; after extinction, poisoning, flooding, darkening, lava, meteors; after the last oil is burnt, the last gas is wasted, the last city is destroyed, that last animal is killed, the last tree is felled, the last wrecks have rusted away, the last rays have faded; then multitudes of new species, able to live in the new atmosphere, on the barren land, will return; and then we may say: gods and spirits, peace to them, let the multitudes come, amen.
New in Index Ten Thousand:
Multitudes ◦ 1363, Sea bed ◦ 1364, Krill ◦ 1364, Amoeba ◦ 1365, Fertiliser ◦ 1365, Ocean birds ◦ 1366, Bat ◦ 1366, Rodent ◦ 1367, Night vision ◦ 1367, Crayfish ◦ 1368, Meadow grass ◦ 1368, Valley ◦ 1369, Lagoon ◦ 1369, Half the land ◦ 1370, Meat- and fur industry ◦ 1370, Artificial fertiliser ◦ 1370, Spagnum ◦ 1370, Extinction ◦ 1371, Atmosphere ◦ 1371,
In memory of Thorkild Bjørnvig (1918-2004) and in particular the poem The Hope from his collection of poems Monkey Goods (1981), whence the following quote:
"May that law be written
as a law for society. The law on the right to multitudes on islands and steppes, in rain forests, waden seas, hedges, under roof ridges - the right of plants and animals to be here on their own premises, not just as materially
Indispensable, as entertainment, devoured until they are literally used up."
(my translation)
